Interviewing isn’t easy and it’s a tough process to nail down. I hate to say it, but for many of you, you will always cringe at the thought of having to interview potential teachers. The unknowns of how the interview will go and whether or not the candidate will live up to our expectations is scary.
Because your team trusts you as a leader to make the best hiring decisions for your company culture, the interview process becomes especially daunting. It’s so easy to become fearful that you will choose the wrong candidate and let your team down.
Although I can’t promise you that you will never hire the wrong person (at some point it happens to the best of us), I can provide you with some unexpected interview questions and techniques to put in place and make a part of your interview best practices. I share those with you in the video below and hope that you apply them to improve your interview process and find quality candidates that are in alignment with your school’s core values.
Here Are the Key Takeaways From This Video:
- During an interview, you have to be comfortable with silence and break down the layers of who this candidate is and understand them from the inside.
- These are the top seven unexpected questions that I have found to ask while interviewing potential teachers for your school…
- What events or influences from your childhood shaped who you are today?
- Tell me 2 or 3 things of which you are most proud of in your life.
- Tell me about a time when the odds were stacked against you but you overcame them and succeeded.
- Describe a situation when you were part of a team and faced a challenge. How did the team overcome the challenge? What was your role in the situation?
- What was your favorite book as a child?
- What is your favorite children’s book and why?
- If I asked your best friend to describe you in 3 words, what would he/she say?
- Here are a couple of examples of questions that will help you gauge their leadership mindset (create your own leadership mindset questions based off of your school’s core values and culture to ask as well).
- If you were to operate your own program, what do you consider key elements in a high-quality operation that you would be sure to include?
- What qualities do you find the most irritating in other people? How do you deal with them?
- Before you offer a candidate a job, schedule a two-hour “classroom audition” with them and observe how they interact with children while doing an activity with them. (Of course, check your state labor laws and make sure you are in compliance).
- Some questions to ask yourself while observing this are:
- Did they come prepared?
- Are they enjoying themselves?
- How do they speak to the children?
- Do they exhibit a respectable personality to manage a classroom?
- Using an interview scorecard is a hiring best practice. You and your admin team should take time together to create one that will be used for during every interview. This scorecard should cover everything from the second you receive their application, to when you call them to set up an interview, their actual interview, and the follow-up process.
